


Transient

by Augustus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-10
Updated: 2006-03-10
Packaged: 2018-08-16 08:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8095054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Augustus/pseuds/Augustus
Summary: All good things must come to an end.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the Memory Incarnate RPG universe, which is why Lily and Theodore are the same age. Credit goes to Maija and Nicole who brought life to Theodore and Lily – I'm playing in their sandpit as much as I am in JKR's one.

Every time they part, it's for the last time. He'd never tell her, but Theodore has memorised every quirk of her lips by heart. She kisses him goodbye, but the truth is less in that clichéd motion than in the twist of her fingers in the folds of his robes. He'll never voice it, but she's incredible. When she walks away, the sun catches in the red of her hair, a burnished halo crowning her head. She makes him think, this one. Sometimes she makes him think so hard it aches.

Lily blushes like an innocent. At times, the silence between them becomes as solid as winter ice. Theodore has never learnt the value of tact, and his words can sometimes let him down. If he understood, perhaps he would be better at this, but Lily is an enigma and whatever it is between them just can't be expressed in syllables and clauses. It won't last. He knows it. He's making the most of borrowed time.

There are times when Theodore finds himself staring at Lily, waiting for her to disappear. Would she shimmer for a moment, or would it be a sudden loss? It's a paradox, the five of them being here, and if there's one thing he's learnt in his seventeen years, it's that magic is never infinite. One day, Lily will leave him, whether it's for Potter or for the past. Loving her would make it no less inevitable; it would only complicate the final goodbye.

Theodore isn't one for trinkets, but he carries her picture in his mind. His home is cold and the rooms are sometimes thick with dust, but now there are pockets of her amidst the emptiness, echoes of her laughter hanging in the air. Whatever this is, it will come to an end. He stores memories between stacks of his father's books and tries to express with his eyes the things that will never pass between his lips. She'll never know she brought colour to the greys of his life. She'll never know just how beautiful he thinks she is. She'll never know he—

She'll never know.


End file.
